Kostas

True but this is football and we're not in the 70s. Penalizing footballers as fair as it might sound at the moment is a thing of the past and a primitive tool for clubs.

With the way we were creating chances? 1 in a million

Open one. I'd rather this didn't turn into one.

That's some refreshing honesty Don't use this please, the more people using it the less bandwidth will be available for me : D

No arguments. I think he did, it's easier to believe that his transfer fits a much needed squad signing rather than the usually overblown expectations of the fans.

Forgot about JT, in any case he signed for the role of the reliable, English, PL experienced 4th CB. Not sure if demands more.

90k per week and being an injury away from playing for one of the biggest teams in England. Squad signing.

No evidence that the feud was ever on, plenty of evidence supporting good relations since then.

About league points being the only reliable indicator of league performance? Really. Might as well throw in the QPR game if you're so desperate for examples.. you've done it before. Another way to look at it is that we finished level with City and only didn't get 3rd due to goal difference and that this season has another 12 games in it to assess our performance. What a load of generic, biased crap .. Well looks like I'm the one with the denial and the memory problem. I still can't remember the Brana goal.

Mind elaborating?

Only I wasn't talking about the Sunderland game.. You've really wiped out that Arsenal game from your memory, haven't you? In danger of sounding like an AVB fanboy I have to say that's bizarre. He wasn't just successful with Porto, Porto won the tremble having finished the league unbeaten and 21 points ahead of the second team. On another note, Andre called Abramovich "Roman" in an official interview, how long has it been since a Chelsea manager did that?

I'm no mod and have no authority but I've been meaning to say this for quite a while so here it goes: Could you please copy the full name of the article or even copy-paste all of it in a quote instead of simply giving the link? You are giving those pieces of shit clicks they don't deserve. I usually see the whole link before deciding whether its worth my time but having the whole text of the article on the forum saves both our times and does not benefit that insult to journalism. It's The Sun ffs.

And yet if we still somehow finish with more than 71 points this will be a better league campaign. Besides didn't we lose 3-0 to Arsenal last year? Sure the other game was at home but performance-wise they absolutely raped us at the Emirates while it took a horrible display from Cech and a suicidal back-pass from Malouda to lose the other one.

He has only answered leading questions about this so far, let's not get on his back yet.

Is it though? League points are the only reliable indicator and afaik we're still doing better than in 10/11.

I was pretty surprised when Zonal Marking wrote a whole article on that and I am even more so now that regulars of the board think that's an issue. I mean doesn't Mata already spend the vast majority of his game time playing in the middle? Sure it does make a difference on the paper (for those not going deeper than FIFA-tactics analysis) but since he is basically given a license to roam around the pitch, you see him more often in the middle than near the wide areas where you'd expect a winger to be. If anything that very freedom that he enjoys has impaired our team in more than one way: We lack a man on the left more often than not, Cole has no-one to overlap. Torres is frequently pushed to that space. Mata does not defend as much as Malouda and the lack of tracking-back has made our left side more vulnerable. Mata never pressed as much as AVB wanted which resulted in the failure of that style and high-line joke that we had to endure from every wanna-be tactician a few months ago. When we have the ball (or rather when we did keep it in an attempt to play possession football) Mata was as much on the middle as any player who starts in a middle position. The only difference I can see his starting position making is right after transitions as more central positioning will both make him available for more players and present his with more options. On the one hand such a situation should not occur too frequently (to be worth a tactical analysis) if we really are going for a different style of play and on the other hand certainly does not warrant the AVB slating I've seen in the name of starting Mata centrally. Therefore, from where I'm standing it's not about getting Mata centrally to benefit Mata (like the bizarre notion that Mata is being wasted by AVB on the wing suggests), it's about getting him out of that wide position to make the life of the rest of his team-mates easier.

Severely overrated. Stylistically he may offer something quite different than our other potential holding midfielders but I'm not sure that's what we will want in the future or if he is even good enough. Not sure where the Busquets analogies come from either. Do people even look past the fact that he came from Barcelona? The guy is a much more traditional defensive midfielder than anyone Barcelona have. The only quality I think he does have that resembles a Barcelona midfielder is how quick he is to press which might be handy if AVB even considers going back to a pressing game-style.

With every antic of his I become more astonished by Liverfails's knack for picking the players that I despise the most. I should have expected them to sign the player responsible for the most disgusting incident of the World Cup.

I certainly don't agree with that idea, league-adaptation may be very important for outfield players (IMHO that concept is simplistic and over-rated) but the differences for goalies are absolutely negligible. This is all very "academic" but I wouldn't waste one year of his contract and his career on loans that are below his level.

It's mainly due to the binary way of thinking that degrades most arguments in all fields to a simple battle of which side will last longer and shall prevail in the public opinion. Obviously it's easier to believe that all "problems" have just 2 causes and build your thoughts on those than to even consider a 3rd option especially when that option is much harder to analyze, as is(/was?) Chelsea's board and its collective decisions. You'll be surprised at how many people begin their argument with assuming that 1st squad transfers can be done only by either the manager (citing the global phenomenon of Alex Ferguson as the rule) or Abramovich (crediting him only with disaster transfers due to Sheva).

The English footballing world deserves someone like Redknapp.

That was true about CRTs not anymore. As always I shouldn't post before I read all the pages.. Says a moderator with a posting frequency of 12 per day

I like Samuel quite a lot for a journo but that was probably a chief-editor request.

Socks+Flip-flops+Snow

Excuse any spelling/grammatical/syntax mistakes in that post of mine, it was written around 5 or 6 in the morning Alex, your point on having three threads to organize and reminisce sounds great and I've seen it work perfectly on one of the most organized forums I've been on. Ultimately I think since that option involves more hassle for the mods it boils down to whether the staff are willing to go through that.